In 1899, a manufacturer of electric taxis was the largest automobile manufacturer in North America. But the gasoline would soon explode.
In New York in 1899, you could take an electric taxi that, at the straightening speed of 15 km/h, got you to your destination without whinnying or backfiring or smelling of dung or badly burnt gasoline.
The manufacturer of this vehicle was then the largest automaker in America.
Its origins can be traced to what is arguably the first electric car to find commercial application: the Electrobat.
The adventure does not begin in Detroit, but in Philadelphia.
Engineer Henry G. Morris and chemist Pedro G. Salom combined their skills there to design, based on a delivery cart, a 1930 kg electric vehicle – the battery alone weighed 725 kg! – who traveled slowly down the main street of the city, in August 1894.
No sooner had their invention been patented than Morris and Salom built a series of three prototypes of varying sizes.
“The largest of the three presents a gleaming appearance, with a contrasting red and black finish, with no visible machinery except the steering lever,” describes tech-forward monthly The Horseless. Age—the horseless, or post-equine age—in its December 1895 issue.
High on wheels, it accommodates the driver and a passenger on its front seat. It has front-wheel drive and a directional rear axle. Its weight has been lowered to 750 kg, the vehicle can reach 32 km / h, with a range of 40 km, the publication supports.
It is on this basis that the two inventors will achieve another world first, 115 years before Téo Taxi: a company of fully electric taxi cars.
In the January 1896 issue of The Horseless Age, Morris and Salom announced their intention to found a company to build their electric vehicle: the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company.
Without charging stations, it would be unrealistic to target the passenger car market. They first want to go to valet services and delivery fleets, which can recharge their batteries at the depot overnight.
In 1895, the electric automobile still had serious advantages over its competitors. It is faster than the gasoline vehicle, offers greater autonomy than the steam car, starts instantly without having to toil with a crank, it is silent and produces no fumes, unlike the horse and of the combustion engine.
On March 27, 1897, Morris and Salom launched a fleet of a dozen electric taxis in Manhattan. The two passengers are seated in the front and the driver in the back, like London cabs. These are arguably the first motorized taxis in history – the London Electrical Cab Company put its first electric taxis into service in August 1897, and Paris tested its first electric carriage the same year.
Four months later, Morris and Salom write to The Horseless Age to report the first months of activity. Between March 27 and August 1, their taxis traveled 23,270 km, an average of 2,370 km for the 10 taxis put into service. They covered an average of 18 km per day and transported a total of 4,765 customers.
Out of cash, the company is however unable to expand its fleet. The article nevertheless caught the attention of a dynamic New York businessman, Isaac L. Rice.
At Rice’s request, the Electric Storage Battery, in which he holds interests, is developing a system of swappable batteries, which can be recharged independently and installed in vehicles. A large workshop is built in the building of a disused ice rink, with stalls where the batteries are slid under the cars.
At the beginning of 1899, a hundred taxis were in service, informs us of the journal Scientific American, in its publication of March 25, 1899. Their batteries gave them a range of 40 to 48 km, at the normal speed of 13 km/h.
That’s when the threads start to get tangled.
In April 1899, New York financier William C. Whitney and a few associates came on board, with grand ambitions and substantial stock market financing.
They already foresee an armada of 12,000 taxis criss-crossing the streets of the main American and, why not, European cities. Quickly, the EVC set up electric taxi services in Chicago, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, Washington. An office has even been opened in Paris to study the European market.
The only company then in a position to undertake such production was the largest bicycle manufacturer in America, Pope Manufacturing, in Hartford. Its president Alfred A. Pope has just started building electric cars under the Columbia brand.
He partners with the EVC to form the Columbia and Electric Vehicle. It receives a first order for 200 taxis and soon 1600 others. At the end of 1899, Columbia was – briefly – the largest automobile manufacturer in the United States.
The downfall will be rapid.
In New York, the electric taxi service appears to be paying for itself, but in other markets loose management and poor maintenance are disrupting business.
The bubble burst in 1901 with the bankruptcy of the Chicago subsidiary, when suspicions of stock market shenanigans ran over the EVC, nicknamed the Lead Cab Trust.
New York taxis survive the rout, but the Electric Vehicle Company, strangled, is unable to renew its fleet. The company disappeared in 1907.
Gasoline cars then take over, as on the entire road network.
The discovery of the great oilfields of Texas in 1901, the large-scale construction of Ford’s Model T in 1908, and the appearance of the electric starter in 1912 doomed the electric car.
The Columbia and Electric Vehicle, renamed Columbia Motor Car in 1908, was acquired in 1910 by United States Motor, which itself went bankrupt in 1912. In the same year, while a small electric convertible cost $1,750, the pedestrian can get a gas-powered car for $650.
Of the whole adventure, only the Electric Storage Battery has survived to the present day, under the name of Exide. Ironically, that was the name she gave in 1900 to the battery specially designed for New York’s electric taxi service.
